Get the VK int from an arbitrary char in java

How do you get the VK code from a char that is a letter? It seems like you should be able to do something like

javax.swing.KeyStroke.getKeyStroke('c').getKeyCode()

, but that doesn't work (the result is zero). Everyone knows how to get the key code if you already have a KeyEvent, but what if you just want to turn chars into VK ints? I'm not interested in getting the FK code for strange characters, only [A-Z],[a-z],[0-9].

Context of this problem --------
All of the Robot tutorials I've seen assume programmers love to spell out words by sending keypresses with VK codes:

Call me lazy, but even with Eclipse this is no way to go about using TDD on GUIs. If anyone happens to know of a Robot-like class that takes strings and then simulates user input for those strings (I'm using FEST), I'd love to know.